This bike soooo much fun. I’m able to ride it on way more trails than expected. I thought it would be a pavement cruiser but it’s a true mountain bike on all but the roughest trails. And the limit is the bike, not the electrical parts. It’s a bit small for me and it was designed for cross country, not extreme downhill. So I have to slow down for technical or rough sections. You can feel the abuse to the bike with the added weight and the hub motor in rough stuff. In all other conditions, it’s pure bliss. It’s particularly fun at night. I ride trails at night and it’s so glorious blasting through the forest at a consistent 18mph with the tunnel vision that’s created by the head light. When I get the creepy feeling that a mountain lion is chasing me, I can easily sprint up to about 25mph to get away. I see a lot of wildlife at night, elk, deer, antelope, coyotes, raccoons, cats, skunks…. no lions, but I know they’re there…. You get a lot closer to them than you would on any other vehicle. It’s actually kinda scary. I had a big bull elk cross my path in the head light within 20 yards and I could hear other elk crossing behind me in the dark… they sounded very close. Scared the crap out of me and all I could think to do is pedal faster. The coyotes don’t even run away, they just watch you go by. I usually finish my night rides with a cruise home on the pavement. With the seat slammed in cruising position I’m able to maintain 20mph with minimal effort to get home and I can sprint up very steep and long hills while barely losing any speed. This GMAC motor is very torquey and pretty quiet. It does have a slight geared noise but it’s a pleasant sound. My tires are louder than the motor. The longest ride I’ve done on a single charge is 14 miles and it seemed to be losing power right at the last few hundred yards. Average ride is about 10-12 miles. But that includes running with a lot of assist, 5xhuman watts, and challenging terrain at an aggressive pace. That essentially adds up to about an hour of pure bicycle excitement, a respectable workout, and knowing that I just had a ton of fun. I keep trying to do a reasonable range test but I can’t help but to push the bike and climb hills, climbing hills at 20mph is very addictive. sometimes I just blast all the hills I can find…. so the range testing is always aborted in favor of fun. This bike isn’t very comfortable after about an hour anyway. It’s super fun to hot rod around and carve turns but it’s not too comfortable for a long long ride.
Things I did right…
GMAC! Maybe it doesn’t do higher speed like a direct drive, but the torque is perfect for what I’m doing and you can push it past 20mph if you want to pedal real fast, but it essentially has a 20mph speed limit because of the gearing, 38t front, 11-34 9 speed in back, so it basically supports my legal class 1 theme by default because most of the time you simply don’t want to pedal at the cadence required to exceed ~20mph
Keeping the gears. It’s a 1 by 9 speed bike. I was gonna make it a single speed. But having those gears to maintain a consistent cadence is where it’s at with this GMAC. It responds very well to a consistent cadence. The gears make that possible.
Dropper post…. I use it a lot. Seat up when climbing and accelerating. Seat down to cruise... and there’s a lot of cruising. I built it as class 1. So it’s nice to change seat height to change muscle groups as well.
Finding a stem and handlebar that allows me to flip the bike over without the display or controls hitting the ground. This a priceless convenience when you have to work on the bike.
What I did wrong…. If I’d have planned this out better and done more homework, I could have bought it as a kit from GRIN. If I’d have bought my parts as a kit, it would have come with the correct setup. As such, I’ve had to fumble my way through setting up the phaserunner and CA. I didn’t enjoy that and I still have a couple issues that I haven’t figured out. I’m sick of messing with the setup. People have tried to help me but even with help I just simply don’t understand most of the time. And I’m starting to suspect that every build is so different at a setup that works for some might not work for all.
I also started with a battery that was too small. It got me going but I only did about 5 rides before it was clear that I needed to spend more money on a bigger battery.
So so much fun! One of the coolest toys I’ve ever had. Thanks GRIN and thanks to you folks for helping me build this thing. And I gotta go thank the guy that laced the motor into a 24” wheel. He struggled with it and didn’t seem too happy with the result, but it’s holding up to some pretty good abuse.
My battery just finished charging…. I’m going for a ride bitches.
ebikes.ca
Tidy installation. Nice work!
